Eva Joly

Eva Joly, born Gro Eva Farseth on December 5, 1943, in Oslo, Norway, is a Franco-Norwegian magistrate and politician. She is known for her commitment to the fight against corruption and her remarkable career in the judicial and political spheres. Eva Joly grew up in a modest family in Oslo. At the age of 20, she left Norway to settle in France, where she worked as an au pair while pursuing her law studies. She earned a law degree and a postgraduate diploma in political science from Panthéon-Assas University. In 1981, she passed an exceptional entrance exam for the National School for the Judiciary, explaining: "There was no general knowledge test, and that suited me." That same year, at the age of 38, she was appointed deputy public prosecutor at the Orléans High Court. In 1989, she was seconded to the Interministerial Committee for Industrial Restructuring (CIRI), an organization attached to the Ministry of Economy and Finance, which supports struggling companies in disaster areas. She became the first Deputy Secretary General not to have graduated from the École nationale d'administration (ENA). She is also an auditor at the Institut des hautes études de défense nationale, where she taught in 1996. Appointed in 1990 as an investigating judge in the financial division of the Paris courthouse, she investigated high-profile cases, such as the one opposing Bernard Tapie to Crédit Lyonnais. She was then assigned the Bidermann case, which led via Elf-Gabon to the Elf affair, w…